What are /r/gamedesign's favorite Products & Services?

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I'd suggest looking at Gamemaker if you're new to game development. Its how i made my first game way back in 2010 and the new release is a lot better and even easier to use if I am not mistaken. On top of that not a lot of programming is needed (although with more complex system you will need some).

I've also heard good things about GD Develop but I've never used it : https://gdevelop-app.com/ again no programming will be required for the most part. I'd suggest staying away from Unity unless you're happy with a lot of coding.

Either way , work on it with your nephew, its likely you could easily create a game with that layout using the above two engines with ease and then with a bit more work get traps/enemies working. Having your nephew working on it as well though will be a massive introduction to game design for him.

To put it really simply, just have a lot of content. Design/build games and put them on an itch.io page. Do game jams. Start 1GAM. Polish the games you like, and try releasing them (an entire skill by itself!). Employers want to see that you are inherently passionate about games outside of school/uni, and a diverse/dense portfolio of actual, playable games will show them that. You'll also build up the technical skills you need to break into the industry at the same time, and get a good feel for specifically what you enjoy making. See if there are any conferences near you that you can attend. Go to them and meet other game developers and pick their brains and tart building those connections early on. Good luck!

It sounds like you're talking about feedback loops, specifically reinforcing and balancing loops: reinforcing loops (sometimes called positive feedback loops, though this can cause confusion) cause some quantity to increase -- strength, power, or rows in Tetris. Balancing loops cause some resource to reduce or level off -- such as actions that cost you stamina until you can't perform any more.

The fundamental "unit" of games is still fairly hotly debated, but we seem to be converging toward the idea of the feedback loop. These loops occur at all levels of game design: there are many feedback loops within a game, more within the player's head, and most importantly those that exist between the player and the game. Some of the ones you've described are often termed "core loops" because they're the feedback loops that the player and game complete over and over again during a game. There's also an important feedback loop between the game+player (together) and the designer.

This concept is key to systemic game design. I wrote a textbook that covers this in depth.

All games are systems, and we can understand systems in the world via games better than any other way. I now spend my time talking about this. A lot.

My initial thought is that the author is a bit overzealous in conflating a goal with a terminal state.

Most commonly-accepted definitions of games differentiate them from toys by the addition of a goal and a structured set of rules by which the goal is attained.

If I'm just bouncing a ball against a wall, for example, I'm just playing with a toy.

If I try to hit a particular spot on the wall from a specific distance, I've turned this into a (rudimentary) game, because I can now determine whether I succeeded or failed, and I've applied a constraint (the minimum distance so I can't just walk up and touch the wall with the ball).

The author here tries to add a terminal state as an additional requirement - by his definition, I would have to decide that I've "won" my game only if I hit the spot 7 or more out of 10 tries, or on the first try, or whatever. This feels arbitrary to me. By his criteria, World of Warcraft wouldn't be a game either. Neither would Dungeons and Dragons. I'm not convinced.

If you're looking for worthwhile reads on game design, my top recommendations would be:

• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, by Jesse Schell
• Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman

​

Some things I consider advancd game design knowledge these days: Understanding and working with games as systems. Getting off the level-based content treadmill. Being able to draw multi-level core loops. Creating your game with hierarchical systemic depth. Building for emergence. Understanding when you want to use different kinds of curves (piecewise linear, logistic, exponential) and why.

Also: Being able to state your game's concept clearly, along with what makes it engagingly different from other games. Working as part of a collaborative team. Understanding the processes of pitching and production. Having been through stage-gating enough to understand its value. Knowing what it is to finish a game. Designing for different monetization models from the start.

Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design" is incredibly informative. Also Mark Brown's YouTube channel is tremendously educative.

I haven't seen the EC video in question (or, I don't remember seeing it at least), but Bartle's Taxonomy is an example of psychographic profiling. While you may not see Bartle's taxonomy mentioned specifically a whole lot, you'll definitely see many different psychographic profiles in one form or another. They're not rules but they act as guidelines and help designers in making games.

Different games have different players, play styles, etc. and will require different types of profiles. Magic: The Gathering for example has the famous Timmy, Johnny and Spike profiles. That article by Mark Rosewater about it is well worth a read even if you don't play MtG. Bartle's taxonomy seems to be useful mainly in the likes of MMOs, where many players are left to interact with each other and do as they wish in an online world (the type of game that Bartle himself helped pioneer).

A lot of games would have their own internal ones for design purposes. There's also ones like the age-old "Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies and Munchkins" that circulated around players of pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, D&D actually lists it's own 8 player types: Actor, Explorer, Instigator, Power Gamer, Slayer, Storyteller, Thinker and Watcher. They help the GMs in creating their campaigns, just like a game designer would use them when designing a game.

Look up Behaviorial Economics.

In particular, I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555

Also, here's another:

Endowment Effect: This is the tendency for us to value things we already own more than things we don't own. This is partly why loot boxes work, especially when they show they are "rare." You may not pay directly for a rare loot box, but if you already earned one... buying a key to open it is less problematic for many.

I posted this on another, similar question:

>Let him have a go at Scratch. You can find it here: https://scratch.mit.edu/ (it's free by the way)

>Scratch is a visual language, which allows kids to build programs and games using building blocks of code. They don't need to learn all that boring syntax, so they can jump straight into creating.

>Every skill he learns using Scratch will transfer over to actual programming languages. So even though it may seem like it's "dumbed down", it isn't. The concepts remain the same.

>It's a great tool to get started with programming, and I've used it multiple times to teach kids to program. Usually kids who enjoyed working with Scratch, will evolve into "real" programming by themselves.

I usually push forward, cut some corners and finish the game. Here's an example game I made, sinked around $1000 in hosting, art and music and earned only like $2 back:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigosaur.gos.android

But I still do not regret it and would have done the same again. Why? Because if I did not, it would always bug me and I would keep thinking about "what if..." scenarios.

- Read every book you can on Game Design.

- Watch every GDC talk you can from the dozens in their youtube channel.

- Listen to designers tell their stories in podcasts such as Designer Notes or The AIAS.

- Learn programming and the basics of art so you can implement your own designs. A design that has not been implemented is not a real thing. Implementation is where designs show their mistakes, ambiguities, holes and missing parts.

- Make games. Small, medium, alone or with others. Not just start them, but finish and polish a few. Publish some of them in places like itch.io, AppStore and Google Play, Steam, or just on your own page.

- Do stuff outside of games, open your mind and learn to appreciate and understand ideas and topics that games don't do or touch today but might in the future.

​

It will take a while, but you have a life to live, don't neglect that. You are a person not just a game developer.

When I was reading your question I immediately thought of Super Mario World for the SNES. I recommend you to check out this book on its level design:

Reverse Design: Super Mario World - Patrick Holleman

If you're interested, Holleman has a series of books on other classic games in which he analyzes how they are designed and how this design can be applied to your own games. I think this would be a good read for you if you want to learn how a good game like this one presents its mechanics, iterates on them and creates challenging situations which are balanced (in difficulty terms).

I do know that a book is, indeed, something that takes time to learn from, so I present you with another option.

Another entry on the main Mario series is Super Mario 3D World. This game uses a technique (which is used in Japanese narrative) called Kishotenkestu. Mark Brown (from GMTK) has a video on this topic and I'm sure you could find some more articles about this online. Here's a link:

Super Mario 3D World's 4 Step Level Design - Game Maker's Toolkit

I hope you can make good use of these sources and I hope this helps you get some kind of inspiration!

Theres a nice little community thats sprouted up around the genre. Its as valid as anything else really.

Listen, I get it, on paper they sound kinda stupid. Try A Dark Room. Its interesting and addicting, yet it has the same base mechanics Im talking about. Im a hardcore gamer, but I can enjoy these casual games too.

Or try Cookie Clicker. A Dark Room and Cookie Clicker are the stand outs from this genre, if you cant enjoy them, then its probably not for you.

> I'd rather smooth clean lines on my graphics rater than the old school blocky pixel look.

The point is that it's much more easier to draw and scale pixel graphics. And the size of the game is a lot lower than it would be if I used high quality textures. Plus I actually love this retro-like style by myself. That's why I decided to use pixel graphics.

By the way. You can check my game out in Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wherry.noparachute

Yes, do make Twines and visual novels. I hired a narrative designer because of their Twine project. It's a great way to showcase your work. But any kind of game will do.

I'm looking for narrative designers myself. When hiring, my priorities are:

• Portfolio: I want to see your previous work, even if it's just a personal project, a jam game or a story you wrote – can be just one page. I'll try to judge the quality of your writing, your design ability and your taste. I'll also look at your style to see if you're a good fit for my project.
• Personality: If your portfolio is good and fitting, I'll see if I'd like to work with you. Does your personality match the culture of my company and my team? Are your interests aligned with the project? Do you have a passion for this specific kind of game? Even if not, can you bring anything awesome to it?

So it depends on what games you want to make. What games do you like? What do you like outside of games? What companies would you like to work for? If you went indie, what game would you make? You need to find this out about yourself, and you find it out by making things. Fortunately, that's how you improve the quality of your work too.

Let me know if you have any questions.

If you already study economics, you may as well start here:

https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Economies-Design-Analysis-Information/dp/0262027259

That said, there are several distinct things meant by “game economies” that point in different directions.

If you mean single-player game economies in one time purchase games, there’s not much to it since they aren’t real economies.

If you mean single-player game economies or multiplayer games where users cannot transact with one another, but in free-to-play games, there are a number of considerations around multiple currencies and the like. This article is pretty good: http://adriancrook.com/a-practical-free-to-play-game-economy-design-example/

If you mean multiuser economies in service based games, the vast majority of the useful stuff will be found by searching for “mmo economies.” Basically, if users can transact with one another, this is where to look.

If you want to make pixel art, I'd recommend aseprite (https://www.aseprite.org/).

Follow MortMort on YouTube. There are plenty of other pixel art channels on there.

Please do appreciate the finesse that goes into pixel art, however, despite its seeming simplicity from low resolution!

Meadows book is a classic. If you want something with more application to game design, check out Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach. This kind of thinking is why I wrote the book.

I don't think there's one "right" way, but there are a bunch of ways that work more or less well.

I'd encourage you to check out two books: Game Mechanics by Adams and Dormans, and Advanced Game Design that I wrote. Both cover game play diagramming from complementary approaches. I like mine better, obviously, but Adams and Dormans have a lot to offer too (be sure to check out Joris Dormans' machinations.io when it goes live, hopefully soon, too!).

> I mean something with which I can write down how my game works in its minute parts: its resources, interactions etc.

You're mainly going to be looking at hierarchical systems diagrams -- game loops -- aided by spreadsheets defining the game's parts, and an overall concept of what you're trying to make. I know it's another self-plug, but articulating the designs for those three levels of the game -- the parts, loops, and whole -- are what my book is all about.

I have read 3 of these:

Predictably Irrational, The Power of Habit, and Flow.

Flow and Predictably Irrational are rather amazing general life books, they points out a lot of things that most people never stop to think about because we have made them automatic.

The Power of Habit felt too much like a self help book that was trying to be a day time TV show but it had some okay tidbits to take away. I have a write-up on those somewhere I will try and find them but no promises. Flow sort of has the same feeling at some points but it's not to the extent that Power of Habit had.

I would throw in a book that's generally mentioned: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

I will take the other 3 into consideration

An old Half-Life mod The Specialists (and from memory, Action Half-Life) both did this. I seem to recall using slow-mo just slowed everything down - but it didn't last long, so you got a decent advantage when you were the one triggering it, because you could make sure you were well positioned and prepared to take advantage of it.

I'd love to see a more modern take that used a line-of-sight or localized slow-mo, though.

Tribes: Ascend. Here was a well-done revamp of a beloved cult classic game, set to make it into the mainstream competitive scene.

Then they said "well shit, everyone's going Free-To-Play nowadays, lets make it free and charge people for every single class, weapon and upgrade."

Which would have been fine, because they included a way to unlock those items just by putting in play time.

But, they weren't making enough money on the game, so they added almost double the number of weapons and upgrades. But didn't balance them AT ALL against the starting set. So the people who DID play or pay for all those starting weapons got screwed and had to either pay or play again to get weapons that would make them competitive again. So a lot of people just stopped playing.

They also didn't launch with the ability for players to host their own Tribes server or include their own maps. Now that HiRez doesn't care about the game, the people still playing Tribes have been playing on the same 8 maps since LAUNCH. And with the odd server issues, I'd imagine HiRez is reducing the number of available servers to save on operating costs.

Put it all together and you've got a nickle-and-dimeing unbalanced FPS that never gets new maps or updates. All within like 6 months of "beta" launch.

How to make it right: you have a dedicated community! Let players host their own Tribes: Ascend servers, let players add custom maps to the rotations, and just charge a flat $60 for the whole game, everything unlocked. They would have made bank and NOT alienated the playerbase.

It's okay as a story of a sensible manager type of person, which is apparently rare in Japan :)

There's not much in terms of game design in the book, but it's pretty alright nonetheless. Also the book is pretty short.

If you like the way Nintendo does things I also recommend the book about Shigeru Miyamoto. But once again, it is not a practical game design type of book, but it might help you learn how Miyamoto approaches his work in general.

Personally, I can recommend "The Art of Game Design" to you. It covers a lot of topics and is also a good entry point.

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Second/dp/1466598646/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1540218109&sr=8-2&keywords=art+of+game+design

The best thing you can do is start learning a programming language and start trying to make something. Really.
You don't need to be an amazing programmer, or artist, but the best way to convey your ideas is to show them. If you can whip up at least a prototype, it will take you miles further than just sharing an idea.

Start small, don't jump into your big master plan of a game. Make a copy of something simple like asteroids (a very common clone) once that is functional, add your own twist. Grow from there.
The general sentiment you'll get is that everyone has ideas. Actually bringing them to life is the hard part.

Unity is a fantastic and free engine to look into, it uses C# (C sharp) and a version of Javascript (not Java, thats different). Its got a great community here on reddit as well as a multitude of other sites, with a lot of documentation. Its generally more for 3D, but can definitely do 2D as well.

For more basic stuff, HTML5 may be worth looking into, though I've not personally delved into that so I don't have any resources in mind.

Really, it doesn't matter what platform you start out on, the core principles are universal. As I said above, the important thing is to pick something, and learn it well enough to create a prototype. Thats how you start.

Add this book to the list: Theory of Fun by Raph Koster.

His website has a ton of interesting thoughts and articles.

Lesson 4 is for you

Piggybacking. It is probably not worth changing rarity names, use your users prior knowledge to help him ease into your game. This will also make communication with players unfamiliar with your game easier. "Oh man, 4 Unclassified cards again!?" vs "Oh man, 4 Common cards again?!". Make things obvious and focus on teaching things that are unique about your game.

(I know OP mentioned its not a card game, it does not matter. This still applies.)

It actually isn't hard to get a private wiki running. We (2-3 guys making games) run Gitlab on our own server and it has a wiki included in which we write some stuff.

Gitlab also comes with an issue board where we track bugs and our next steps.

Hmm... this is a tough one.

I can answer with one of the ones I've spent the most time with, I guess?

World of Tank's armor penetration mechanics is a large part of what makes the game interesting and the moment to moment gameplay much more interactive than faster paced shooters.

In short, each tank's gun has a penetration value, and armor has a respective value. When you shoot, the penetration value is modified by +/- 25% that is compared against the armor value at the point of impact and determines whether you deal damage.

Now, there are 2 caveats here that makes the whole thing work. First, each tank has its own armor profile with different strong and weakpoints. And second, the ANGLE of armor impacts the armor value matters where the greater the angle of impact (relative to the normal), the higher the effective armor value is: https://worldoftanks.com/dcont/fb/imagesforarticles/chieftains_hatch/stratguide/armorangles.jpg

I guess it depends on what you're having the players do. Are they trying to get login credentials? Are they maybe trying to find sites that would normally be inaccessible?

Check out the demo video here: http://sqlmap.org/ This should give you a good idea for what some of these things look like.

Also maybe look into stuff with encryption keys. That could be a real puzzler.

There's also social hacking, such as spoofing an official email address to get company information or gaining access to places in a building by knowing the lingo and looking official.

Have documentation without bullshit.

Just write your thought down and detail later. Make it fast and painless, in and out.

If you are a designer have a personal journal. What I use is workflowy (50 referrals,they should give me a medal) and just write whatever pops in my head and its easy to go into more detail and organize later.

As for what to write in it. EVERYTHING. Projects, concepts, mechanics, dreams, worlds, stories, game analysis, experimental findings from prototypes, other tests, bugs, debugging, methodologies, combat logs,
simulations, player feedback. Everything related to games and game design.

Everything that can be written, write.

You have no idea how great a boost in your creativity is to have everything written down.

I tried something crazy for my platformer, dividing the screen into two huge buttons: right/left half.

• hold right half to go right
• hold left half to go left
• hold right then left to jump right
• hold left then right to jump left

Sounds weird but you become used to it after a short while. It was not very good though.

Feel free to try it:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=drjamgo.gude_jump

It's not so bad. Looks like it could be a cute farming "plat your crop" or gardening kind of game, with some graphical updates.

> The objective is not as obvious as I thought it would be.

Plant all of your flowers/crops so they are connected and will have the largest yield.

> Ten cells across is too cramped for touch manipulation on a small screen;

There is plenty you can fit into 5x5, 6x6, ect grids

> most of my board is really, really boring. It's just an inert, dull and gray space waiting to be painted. That was part of my initial vision, a dull world that you liven up and fill with color as you paint flowers. But the reality fell far short from the vision. I wanted a relaxing game, not a mind-numbingly boring one!

Make them actual flowers or plants, or better images of flowers on the tokens? Have the starting spots be seed bags and the final spot a full/largers image of the flower?

The grey box is probably the worst offense in the gif. It's just... there. No theme, no flavor, no juice. Even something as simple as a garden plot needs something to it. And browns and greys of dirt are still 'bare' and dull enough to have a good effect when livened up with plants.

>Backtracking is also not very intuitive. You can click on a colored spot to return the bag to that spot, but I don't know how to teach the player or help them discover that. Drawing a line from to help the player visualize the path taken by the bag should help that, and that's probably the next thing I'm implementing.

Make it a shovel. Boom, instant intuitiveness. Maybe a one-time popup or something that says it is to help rearrange the plants. Once they use it once, and their whole line of flowers are gone, the reasons to use it and the mechanics are solidified.

/r/gamedev

/r/inat

/r/gamedevclassifieds

This guy needs testing

Midnight Quest needs testing I should have his reddit contact....ugh too hard to find, contact him over on Steam.

Watch the subs and when you see someone needs testing, jump right in, offer to test ever x days/weeks for the devs who are just showing up to lurk after they have crawled out of their dev hole for air.

Also, Unity 5 Personal edition for free, no royalties whatsoever.

Only catch is you'll have to buy iOS and Android Pro add-ons when you'll have $100 000 in revenue or founding in previous fiscal year.

Workflowy

I keep a tab open all the time and write any time I have a thought.

It's also much easier to detail things as you want and reorganize stuff. It's very low maintenance.

I'm making an Android game called Build Up The Base, if you ever want to practice balancing an incremental let me know.

You gather resources and build up your base, and each new building adds complexity. By the end game balancing gets tough.

It's free on the Play Store, let me know if you're interested.

First off, go here https://color.adobe.com/pl/search?q=dark%20cold, find yourself a nice color scheme and apply it. The game will immediately look 1000% better.

> designed to challenge players to use both sides of their brain simultaneously to control two separate player objects.

I like dexterity and puzzle platformers, but this seems more like an idea for a torture (or a diagnostic test) than a game.

http://www.graphviz.org/ is the perfect tool for visualizing trees/graphs without having to do any manual layout at all (and is free).

EDIT: Look at some great examples here: http://graphs.grevian.org/example (I guess Example 3 is exactly what you need, so just copy that and type in your tech names and you are done).

Prototype it using Twine and find out the answer to your questions.

Twine is a very simple tool to make text games. I know you mentioned Assassin's Creed, but your actual gameplay seems to be about dialogue choices rather than actual movement in a 3D environment. The "hardest" thing you'll need to use are variables, but those are easy to learn and there are plenty of resources on how to use them with Twine.

Firewatch was prototyped in Twine.

Let me know if you have any questions.

​

I teach a class of 20 young adults at a community college-type school (in Finland) and we start our year of game design by doing 2D stuff in Construct 3 (right after making our first board game).

It has actually become my personal go-to tool when I want to prototype an idea or get something up and running quickly. By using the available templates, you can literally have a working game ready to go in a manner of minutes. Seeing results quickly does wonders to motivation, specially with kids.

The education license is something like $25 per student per year (12 months - there's also a free trial version). This means they can also use Construct at home if they get inspired in class.

Games made with C3 work straight out of the box in basically any modern web browser, including smart phones. The app itself too runs in a browser (or optionally as a Chromium app) and uses cloud saves (OneDrive, Google Drive, etc), so you can pick up your project easily from nearly anywhere.

The Scirra forums are also quite bustling and there are tons of tutorials available. The developers themselves frequent the forum actively as well.

Tl;DR Can recommend Construct 3 for teaching game design, 5/5.

Time to recommend Workflowy and get more for my bazzilion free space.

I tend to be messy. Whenever I have a thought i just make another bullet point and then detail as necessary.

I always have it on standby and write the thoughts in about 5 seconds and move on.

Sometimes I do some revising and move things about and detail some more. That's it.

To me it has become painless and actually fun. No contriving myself with bullshit while I'm writing my thoughts.

If you want a slice on how it looks here is a link. It's messy and not really understandable by anyone other then me. But its your brain that wrote it and its context. It sure beats memory.

You might want to check out this book by Tarn Adams, of Dwarf Fortress fame. I haven’t personally read it, but if anyone knows how to procedurally generate interesting stories it’s this guy.

Perhaps someone that’s read it can offer insight?

I'm a big fun of "buttonless" controls on mobile, virtual joysticks are tedious to use in my opinion on touch screen. Data Wing is a good example for how to implement good touch controls. Also a good example would be Hill Climber, where you actually have buttons, but they are touch only, no direction input needed, and they are far away from each other (although that makes it impossibile to play with one hand).

I did something similar as you on my snake game (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.corgeekssoftware.games), the whole screen is 2 buttons, with the snake's head as a divider. You cannot miss-click, you would have to miss the entire screen to do that!

There's a preview on Amazon that you can flip through: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-Kaufmann/dp/0123743281?asin=0123743281&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Monsters-Children-Make-Believe-Violence/dp/0465036961

Read this while at university. This examines both what effects fantasy violence has and why most video game studies are flawed. Tldr; they use old television and movie studies data.

Sounds a lot like The Lean Startup applied to games. Makes a lot of sense for indies, the gist is build the minimum viable product and validate that anyone wants it before investing a ton of energy into it.

In most cases I vote for undo. If your game can be brute forced then removing undo will likely not deter people, you're just punishing every player who slips up because of some other user bad habits. I also think, in most puzzle games, removing undo makes the game more difficult without being any more challenging

I started playing Stephen's Sausage Roll and the undo feature is brilliant, theres 3 buttons: undo, restart level, and exit level (back to overworld) and the undo button undoes restarts and exits too, there's many times when I accidentally restart the level, so it makes sense to be able to undo any mistake. For what it's worth without even the basic undo, I would probably hate this game.

another game with undo that I like is Puzzle of Jellies. Just like SSR, I don't use the undo to brute force this, but to execute new ideas with little risk. To be honest there were a few levels I did brute force, one of them I kept restarting to do this, 1 I undid (of the 42 levels I've beaten), both of these levels weren't really good, rather than requiring some sort of newfound understanding of the game's rules they felt like there was just an arbitrary sequence to guess.

If players feel the need to brute force your game, it either means the player is lazy and stupid or the game is not effectively teaching the player techniques or encouraging certain mental grokkings.

1 common thing between both of my examples is that a level is solved with a large number of precise moves, accidentally rolling a sausage 5 spaces instead of 4 can ruin 100 previous moves if you have to restart. If most levels only take a handful of moves than it's not a huge deal.

Are we talking about entry level for first job? Or already stablished designers?

One common pattern in my particular experience with entry-level GD jobs, was that junior level design and junior economy designers had more demand. And, nothing triumphs real experience, the closer to a commercial project the better, but something you have finished fully and published wherever you could.

I think there's a big merit in publishing (alone or with a small team) a little game in appstores, itch.io or similar that you can sell in your CV as "full professional project" even if it had not the resources behind to become a hit or even you marketed it a lot.

/r/Unity3D is a very popular option with a lot of documentation and tutorials available. You'd be developing in C# and could create builds for multiple platforms - Android, iOS, PC Mac etc.

http://unity3d.com

To tack on, WotC has since added Vorthos and Mel to their psychographics.

Also, for an example of a game with good application of Bartle's taxonomy, I recommend Kingdom of Loathing.

I could be wrong (not my area of expertise), but I'm sure I remember blender being mentioned as a really good piece of software for 3d.

You'll probably get better advice over on r/gamedev as that's the sub for the programming/software side of making games. This sub is for things like game mechanics and feel, with many of us (me included) being designers of tabletop games, rather than video games.

> 7) Computer Doing the Difficult Work > A good game must be filled with interesting choices and if the player wants the computer to take care of difficult tasks then they must be able to do so.

Hmm...

Makes me think of "excise" from About Face. You can see the introduction of the chapter here.

How this applies to game design, is what parts of the game are fun to control and what parts would be better off automated? In an RTS, the individual units are given some autonomy. You tell them to go somewhere, and they'll find a path that gets them there. If they're in range of an enemy maybe they'll shoot automatically. But in a platformer, if you just told Mario where to go and he found his own path there, that would eliminate the fun part. In an FPS, you want to control when and where the character shoots. But to have to control at that level of precision would be unmanageable in an RTS.

The first part not only isn't new, but it is actually in use by some companies, check Minecraft. In fact there are entire websites around this idea.

The second part sounds somewhat between impractical and infeasible.

First, you would need entire teams devoted to implement and test random suggestions just see "what sticks", hardly a good use of resources.

Second, and most importantly, games are a complex network of interconnected rules, and changing one thing can ripple through the entire design. If something seems to work, is because of that single change in isolation, or is any permutation of the 20 different things that you are testing at the same time?

If by "story game", you mean something like an interactive fiction game, then I strongly second /u/h_double with Twine, or something like it. There is also Quest - http://textadventures.co.uk/quest/

or Ren'Py and others if you google "interactive fiction game engine". Trust me, you'll just overwhelm yourself trying to learn a more general engine like Unity or Unreal.

If you meant something different by story game than that, RPGMaker or GameMaker Studio are good choices too that are still way simpler than big engines. Go for the simplest tool you can find if your main goal is to make just one game you already have a plan for.

Huh, but you are able to move while enemies are moving and even hitting them while both of you are moving. There's not a point on any movement in which "everyone is stopped."

Source: I just finished my first playthrough and I'm playing some of the mods released.

Also, form their own webpage:

> Is the game turn based or real time?

> We feel that real time works better with the game we are making. It goes well with the atmosphere of the game since the player can be surprised by creeping monsters and the mood of the combat is more intense. Timing is an essential tactical element and our puzzles also benefit from working in real time. Real time gameplay also helps us differentiate from a number of other dungeon crawl games that have been released over the years.

Not sure if this is what you really want, but I've contributed to https://openrct2.org/ which is an open source rewrite of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (which was itself just an extension of the original). You can look around to see how things affect one another, though might take a bit of digging.

I'm not 100% certain I know what you're saying in the second half of your title, but I know that the Adventurer Mode in Dwarf Fortress definitely has generated quests.

Essentially you travel from town to town, and in each one you can talk to the mayor, innkeeper, or random townsfolk and if there's something of interest nearby, they'll send you on a quest to address it. Sometimes this is asking you to kill the leader of a group of bandits or goblins who have been attacking the town (Dwarf Fort actually simulates the history of a world when generated, so this is something that actually would have happened), or they tell you about the legend of some artifact nearby that you can go try and recover.

Regardless, it's an awesome game that everyone should try...just read a beginner's guide as you start your first game; it's very complex and no tutorial and very little in-game instruction. Once you get into it though, the game is unlike anything else out there.

If it's just a small hobby game, then I wouldn't worry about it. If you want to add 2D graphics in the future, you could always try Pygame, and adapt your code to use it.

Http://opengameart.org is pretty cool

Someone already mentioned Kenney, his stuff is usually also on there.

Also. You can try just using squares you make in MS Paint. Or Paint.Net if you're feeling fancy.

Bookmark this website. I've found it very difficult to learn programming here, especially with more nuanced languages like C++. Its tutorials are frontloaded. It's a fantastic resource if you want to know how to do something in particular.

The site you linked (your own personal blog I assume) is down.

Here is a link I found from PCGamer that talks about some free assets being offered by Epic:
http://www.pcgamer.com/epic-gives-away-fantastic-unreal-engine-4-assets-for-free/

It's probably the same assets you are linking since it the article was just made yesterday. Here is a link to the actual assets if you want to skip the article:

https://www.unrealengine.com/content/1c3ff01e749c4e48a7e8c24a7128ce24

Here you go.

Specialize! You have no idea how important knowing about the games in your intended genre is. Learn from the past! Knowing your genre is the start!

Have a Game Design Journal, write your thoughts down easy and fast. Don't bother with game design documents this is something personal for you. You can use Workflowy or other note keeping app and always have it open. If you don't write your thoughts down you might lose them forever!

In addition find about games that have:

Good Economics: Patrician 3, The Guild, Cultures/Northland, X3.

Good Strategic AI Battles and Unit Design: Starsector, Total War.

Good Combat: Dark Souls, Skyrim with mods, Mount and Blade.

Good Faction Design: Dominions, Sovereignty crown of kings, HoMM.

Note this examples are just what I have come up with at the top of my head, you should actively seek more.(In fact other users could suggest more)

This is important to get a feel for what the AI can do and how to setup AI correctly. RTS design is very important in many types of games.

I recently released a free Android game on Google Play. It's a puzzle-inspired endless runner. I'd love to get some feedback!

Link to the game on Google Play

Link to a gameplay video

A systems approach to game design: Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach (possibly the most boring title ever, so it goes). The book goes from deep theory to the specifics of design and development.

I wasn't able to find a study, but I believe I saw the concept that we tend to "overbuy" due to overestimating how often unlikely events happen in "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

You can play it for free here, it's worth a look, it was even put in the initial selection of 14 videogames made by MoMa museum (here the other titles). Arguable choice, but still something.

Composing music is usually an activity but in a rap battle the composers are reacting to each other and to the audience, which I think adds enough restrictions to push it towards being a game.

I think in this column he was just trying to write down a concise definition for what it means to be a game, without talking about how to design a good game. He has other columns about that.

In my game: Throne and Crown, there is a bacon gate. There is no bacon in episode 1, so you're supposed to remember. But no one except my beta tester has gotten that far.

Free to Play: http://www.kongregate.com/games/FaithClubDotNet/throne-and-crown

Dwarf Fortress has something like a simplified version of this, where there's a preset list of weapons that your blacksmith can make, and each can be made out of different materials. Raw materials have several hardcoded values that correspond to real-world properties, and different weapons use them in different ways. So, a platinum warhammer will be heavy enough to deal a lot of damage, while a platinum sword is scrap metal. A steel warhammer will be a little less damaging, but will last much longer due to steel's high impact-fracture tolerance.

That seems to have a certain amount of customization, without quite hitting the level of complexity you're worried about.

If you don't want to simplify it that much, you could also make a game where the crafting system is the entire focus, with the rest of the game mechanics serving to support that. I'm not sure what games there are like that... something like Zen and the Art of Transhumanism, perhaps? Or some parts of Spore?

Readability is king. I would err on the side of simple, sans-serif fonts that still fit with your game style. Dafont.com and Google Fonts have good style filtering tools, including which ones are license-free.

Tutorials, unfortunately no. Graphic Design and art programs are my kryptonite, but in my attempts to become a better artist I have found that GIMP is a great, free open source Photoshop alternative

1) if I didn't attend a school like full sail and just went to a university that didn't offer game designing. What degree would be the closest to game design.

If you're doing the coding, computer science. If you're doing the art, graphic arts. If you're managing a team of programmers, engineering management. If you're marketing/promoting a game, marketing.

2) what programs are used for character/landscape design and can you give me a brief description of how the process of designing both goes down

2d and 3d are going to be vastly different answers. There are also hordes of tools out there for both, not only for the actual design/modeling but for creating animation, tiling, texture mapping, artificial lighting.

For example, you might make a 3d model in 3d studio max, the textures in photoshop, and import it all into unity for animation.

3) what exactly does a game engine like unity/unreal do for a game

They create the basic framework for your game to be built upon. Things like drawing to the screen properly, allocating memory, loading animations, detecting collisions, etc.

4) what are good programs for a beginner like me to mess around in and get used to things

If you have no programming experience Gamemaker. If you have programming experience but are new to games then I would suggest following Unity tutorials.

On top of that it's super old arch vis. Like from 4.4 or something. I remember this a couple years ago. I've been using UE4 professionally for 3 years. (since '14)

I am sure you can find some newer stuff than that if you look hard enough. They also are doing a new arch vis thing called datasmith for cad/archvis stuffs https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/beta. No clue how it will improve that stuff. Not really into archvis or cad.

Yes!

feedback link right here: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-jam/rate/158974

You can download from that link or from the official game page (prettier) which is here: https://giovannibarrottu.itch.io/b-arena

I was going to write a flippant comment about using absolutely anything (and link to this list of nouns). But thought that could actually be a neat idea, and one that could differentiate your game a bit.

Each pickup could be a completely different object (maybe with a theme, or maybe completely random). You could find images from asset packs, or somewhere like the noun project. Instead of just giving you points, you'd fill up this huge collection/scrapbook/dictionary of points in the form of random things. It'd give you a reason to go back and look for pickups, and be a great way to make 100%ing the game more fun.

Or you could just use bananas.

I think the core concept isn't anything new and has been done tons of times before, text games where the only game mechanic is to choose what to say etc. Given this it is entirely possible for you to do it. I highly recomend doing a MVP using a platform such as Typeform: https://www.typeform.com/

It will let you play test conversation branches without knowing code. You can also test some basic visuals, videos, etc. Good luck.

Check out Stonehearth for a DF-like that is playable for the average user. It's heavily inspired by DF (devs even added a citizen manager called "Hearthling Therapist" in the last patch). Worth playing even in early alpha.

The designers of Kingdom of Loathing got into this issue a bit, trying to avoid mechanics that encouraged people to do un-fun things because they were Optimal - the main dev compared it to "people who would rather stab themselves in the dick for eleven points, than bang the prom queen for ten points".

Which gave rise to one of my favorite terms for a phenomenon: dickstabbing.

A thing that helps me is to to analyze games in the same genre and just outline everything that is the same/constant.

For instance in big budget FPS shooters some constants could be:

• Computer controlled enemies are really bad a shooting.
• Enemies are predictable/scripted.
• You always seem to have enough ammo.
• Your gun always works.
• Any injures you acquire never have permanent effects.
• Reloading is really easy/automatic.
• You can always find cover.

I then look at the constants and try to change them and this often leads me to new ideas where the rest of the game has be structured in a way that makes the changes work/interesting.

Here are a couple of games that explore the constants of the FPS genre.

• Receiver
• SUPERHOT

My vote is for you to go make mods.

A lot of these suggestions are giving you options for making things that are close to video games, but not video games.

You can, by the end of the weekend, "bring those skills into making games". Just find a game you like that allows you to edit quests and character dialog. After all, from your post, you're not asking for easy ways to make games as a writer, you are asking for ways to get your writing into a game. Well, mods are that way. The code, animations, models, and design tools are already there, it's all just waiting for some good dialog and a bit of quest design.

Some moddable games are: Skyrim, Divinity Original Sin 2, Dragon Age, and Mount and Blade.

There's also this: https://assassinscreed.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-updates/351257/Assassins-Creed-Odyssey-Story-Creator-Mode

I'd recommend starting with the AC tool and moving to Divinity. The rest of those engines are pretty janky.

Notch was basically just the first person to combine the voxel graphics of infiniminer with the gameplay content of dwarf fortress.

He got lucky and managed to introduce the concept of lego to computer screens at the right time, but that doesn't make him a great programmer or an inspiration. In the same way that we don't worship people who develop Zynga games or P2W mobile apps, we shouldn't worship someone who was so directionless, anti-modding, and pandering to "average" people.

Would it help to first design the game as a visual novel?

That way you could plan your routing, choices options, characters, introductions, dialogues, locations, scenes and probably a whole lot of other stuff I'm seeing you mention.

Ren'Py runs on Python and is generally really use in use. I don't suppose you could write a custom loader for your format in python and go from there?

Once you finish the game you could just write another python exporter to save the entire game in a format you could use more easily with another engine, like JSON.

I'll take my most ridiculous solution award now.

It's far from free, but a layout program like InDesign is probably what you're looking for. If you're looking for something free or cheap, this came up after a cursory google search. I'm sure there are other alternatives out there, as well.

Graphic wise you can do things for very cheap for artstyles like that while still looking good.

You have procedural materials, shaders and lighting that work well with things like sprite renders.

You even have things like this which would be perfect for isometrics.

>anything with a resolution higher than 32x32 are WAY over my ability level.

There you go.

You can use them as rendered sprites for 2D games or used it as 3D voxels.

Something like this could also work.

http://www.alice.org/index.php

Things like this might be good to look into.

Or drag and drop tools to create simple games. Can't think of one off top of my head but if he likes making simple games he might go out himself to learn more as he progresses.

> I don’t know HOW to make games. I have ideas that I believe are unique, but I can’t code, model, or animate. I just make lots of ideas.

This stops a lot of people. Ideas, to tell the truth, are by far the easiest part of the process. You've got to learn at least some of these skills to get anywhere. Here's a coding class to get started on C#, the programming language Unity uses. https://www.sololearn.com/Course/CSharp/

> The school system over complicated names for me so I don’t know what college courses or high school classes I should be attending.

This is going to vary a lot depending on where you are, but make sure you take any Algebra, Computer Science, and Programming classes you can find. Art classes will also help. In college, you might want to look into majors specifically for game design. My college has a major based on computer animation and programming for entertainment as part of its software engineering courses, so do some research and look into those.

As for motivation, that's on you. A lot of people will tell you that they always wanted to make a video game and that they have some magic idea that'd uproot the industry but it never comes to fruition. You've got to have an idea that you want to create so much, to the point that you're willing to put tons of work into it. Because that's what game design and development is, tons and tons of work.

I like using a wiki, that way it's easy to interconnect all the different entries.

You can also start pages for any random bit of the setting or mechanics you think of, add tags/categories, etc.

I like Tiki Wiki, but if you're familiar with Wikipedia, the software for that is MediaWiki. Both of those are free.

While you are searching, you can already make games. They will just be ugly, but playable. (There are also free assets you can use as slightly nicer placeholders.) For design talent: just keep it simple and copy and tweak existing concepts for now.

Have you ever eg even made a Tetris clone? Or PacMan?

See https://dev.to/code2bits/pac-man-patterns--ghost-movement-strategy-pattern-1k1a and https://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

I am not a professional in the games industry, but the tool I use to make sense of any complex information is org-mode and I am pretty sure that is what I would use if I somehow ended up working on stories for a game company as well. Just an amazing tool that does everything (for free!). I use it to organize everything in my life at home and at work, including all my hobby game projects.

Just write it and get it out of your system.

Inspiration is precious which is why you want to write as fast and painlessly as possible. Which is why you need a journal. Once you have nothing more to write you can get back to work.

But you should have a work ethic, procrastination is not the same thing as inspiration.

I personally use workflowy as a journal. As its easy to just write and then detail and sort later.

I am just reading the game design book "Level Up". It gives a lot of practical help. I think the most of the process described there is using pen and paper for the design work. I am just starting, but it makes fun to read to. Maybe you can also use the time to read ? ;-) https://www.amazon.de/Level-Guide-Great-Video-Design/dp/1118877160/

ALSO there's this one Gunpei Yokoi: The Life & Philosophy of Nintendo's God of Toys.

But I don't think it is available in any form, I'd really like to read it.

Following the discussion in another thread here started by /u/Ok-Document-7607 Yokoi's book might shred some light on how a much more technical/programming-type person has approached their designs.

Soul Knight - mobile healing only if you buy an item - items are randomly generated in shops, which in turn generate infrequently on maps. Coins are hard to get cuz they spawn randomly.

Health as a resource that is hard to get and manage - check out spelunky - collecting items to regain health, bringing something back to a checkpoint,

Rainbow six siege, PUBG, Battlefield - DBNO status where you are injured and have to wait for others to pick you up or bleed out to death.

Healing regen / buff only next to campfires - TERA, Dark Souls. Also temporary maximum HP decrease until you kill a boss in Dark Souls (AKA HP as a first-try bonus :)

pay real money (or in-game gems) to gain lifes you lost by loosing, or wait ~24h to regain health - many mobile apps nowadays...

OSU! - pressure of time - health constantly depletes, you complete combos to regain health.

Many mechanics from Magic The Gathering - for example heal by sacrificing cards, heal by dealing damage to others.

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is a really good general design resource.

In fact, doors that are ambiguous in the direction in which they open are named "Norman Doors" after him.

Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, pub 2017 (I wrote this). It's fairly advanced, but a number of undergraduate programs are using it, and I've used it with numerous first-year classes. It covers theory and practice in detail.

A brand new one: The Elements of Game Design, by Robert Zubek. Introductory level, looks very good!

With cooking games, you're going to target a large number of casual players. And it's a very big plus point for cooking games. I worked on a casual cooking game a couple of years ago (Check out Masala Express). The players would always review our game very positively.

Our initial levels were only, like 2 - 3 minutes long. And later levels were a lot longer based on the number and types of dishes the player had to make.
Each dish the player made had different steps he had to follow. Each dish went through intro - practice - master phase. These phases were spread across levels. We also had different cuisines. This created variety and reduced repetitiveness.

I'd like to help you out with the design, PM me if you have any questions and I'll answer as best as I can.

I use the free version of Scarlet (for Android). I've tried others but they just haven't worked for me -- often either too slow or too complicated. (Or they're slow and the layout is complete ass; looking at you, OneNote)